Mountain*7 - for the person with nothing better to do

As the dust settles on another year of uninspired Mercury Music Prize nominations, The Liminal have decided upon a selection of 12 albums that far better represent the variety of extraordinary music being produced in Britain today. No entry fee, no token nominations, no cosy industry shindig, no reference to sales figures or the tedious critical consensus which dominates elsewhere: we call it the Uranus prize because it revolves on a different axis to the others. We will announce in due course who will follow in the footsteps of last year’s inaugural winner Richard Skelton.

Read the rest of the entry and find out the 12 nominees over at The Liminal.

Posted by poacher in music at 20:56 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Artist: Erik Enocksson
Album: Apan
Label: Release the Bats

I think it’s fair to say that Apan had been lurking in the background of Erik Enocksson’s music from the very beginning. Despite the surface calm of the creaky folk ruminations of Farväl Falkenberg and With Its Dark Tail Curled ’Round the Garage and the sombre chill of the choral explorations of Man tanker sitt there was always a larger, deeper undertow to his sound – as much a feeling as an actual sonic presence. (Think of the queasy (if beautiful) pump-organ that swells beneath ‘Whatever Drove Her Shivering Into The Cold, Cold Sea’ from Farväl Falkenberg). Well, the clanging, and at times diseased, kosmische of Apan is that undertow writ large. His music has never exactly been an easy listen but this is certainly the darkest of his albums to date.

Read the rest of the review over at The Liminal.

"I", Apan LP (2011) by Erik Enocksson

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 12:55 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother’s mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

“Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?”

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

Hart Crane, 1926

Posted by poacher in poetry at 14:15 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Matana Roberts - Mississippi Moonchile from Constellation Records on Vimeo.

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Matana Roberts (image by Scott McMillan)

I recently had a discussion via email with Matana Roberts about her extraordinary new album, Coin Coin: Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres. Read the rest of the piece over at The Liminal.

You’ve played in band situations in the past – have you always had in mind something as ambitious as the 15-piece band you assembled for the various chapters of Coin Coin? Could you tell us a bit about how you came up with the idea for the project?

Yes, Coin Coin represents a segment of my work that I had been piecing together before I even realized it was what I was doing. It has been a very organic process. Coin Coin is multi-segmented because I have about that many areas of enquiry based around the historical subject matter of the American South as in it relates to my own ancestral history as well as a continued an interest in spooks, ghosts and spirits and the universality of humanness outside of boundaries of race, gender and class.

Matana Roberts - Libation for Mr. Brown: Bid Em In

Posted by poacher in music interviews at 19:48 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Artist: Michael Chapman
Album: The Resurrection and Revenge of the Clayton Peacock
Label: Ecstatic Peace

The Resurrection and Revenge of the Clayton Peacock (a reference to the track ‘The Death of the Clayton Peacock’ on John Fahey’s The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death) is, unbelievably, Chapman’s first improv album to which the legitimate response seems to be, “where has this come from?” Chapman’s life and work, despite its scope of influence and its always oddly marginalised status, has been undergoing something of a critical reappraisal of late with the re-releases of some of his classic early albums and vocal support from underground figures such as the aforementioned and now deceased Jack Rose, Tom Carter and Thurston Moore; but still, none of that really prepares you for such a strange and other sounding album.

Read the rest of the review over at The Liminal.

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 10:41 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

A round up of 20 or so releases we couldn't cover in full over at The Liminal. I reviewed the new Altar of Plagues on Profound Lore, David Andree's In Streams , a tape release on Sunshine Ltd., and Cian Nugent's brilliant Doubles album, out on VHF.
Read the reviews over at The Liminal.

Posted by poacher in music reviews at 10:23 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)